The Messengers

I won't lie to you, I enjoyed this movie. Yes, it was rather generic. Yes, it borrowed some plot points from other movies. And yes, there were way too many crows. Yet despite all the negative I continued to hear about it, I went and saw it anyways, and I'm glad I did.

Many plot points, such as a haunted house in the middle of nowhere, parents not listening to their kids, and ghosts out for revenge are ideas that Hollywood has used and recycled more times than a person can count. However, The Messengers manages to put these together into one movie, without going for too much at once. Certain scenes were rather predictable, so I won't claim that the movie really innovates on any of the standard horror elements, but there are plenty of moments that had me jump in my seat, and had the female members of the audience squealing and clutching their boyfriends.

Overall I felt at the end of the movie that, while not amazing, it was worthy of my time and money to see with a couple friends on a lazy afternoon.

"The Messengers" is a been there, done that, horror about a family who move to a spooky house in the middle of nowhere and then strange things begin to happen. It sounds like you have seen this film before yet the story still keeps you interested and in some cases even intrigued.

A family move from Chicago to an eerie, abandoned farmhouse in North Dakota to start a fresh and to start growing sunflowers on its land, aw. Then the teenager daughter Jess (Kristen Stewart, Panic Room) begins to sense strange happenings from the moment they move in, something just isn't quite right, her toddler brother, Ben, also begins to notice creaking noises and following shadows and the mother (Penelope Ann Miller) just can't get rid of THAT stain on the wall. However, the family don't seem to communicate so everybody just gets on with it without mentioning the strange goings on to other family members. Tut.

Roy the dad, (Dylan McDermott, Miracle on 34th St) then hires Burwell, a man who has literally came from nowhere to help on the farm, just as long as Roy throws in a free dinner. Mysterious Burwell (Aidan from Sex and the City) comes complete with sideburns a beard and a backwards cap, yes, a backwards cap. They are all getting on nicely, the sunflowers are growing, Jess has made a friend in Bobby but mum Denise just can't get THAT stain off the wall. So where did Burwell come from? Please enter ghostly Gollum like figures, shrieking violins, pecking crows and a lot of jumpy movements.

There isn't much new with "The Messengers" but with the film changing which character it's going to focus on every 5 minutes it still manages to keep you entertained and even concerned in what is going to happen. However, we know what is going to happen, don't we? You know what's round the corner, yet you still manage to jump, and I still managed to enjoy it!

There is evidence to suggest that children... would really rather watch something else.

As suspense/horror movies go, this one isn't amazing. Its hardly original; more like Hitchcock's The Birds meets Verbinski's The Ring. Honestly. Its a perfect combination of the two.

Personally I'd recommend watching the afore mentioned separately, each being better alone than this film. Really, the only thing it seems to have in abundance OTHER than unoriginality, is cheap pop-out scares. I mean, yeah, its kinda fun the first time or two... but after about half a dozen, you start to wonder if there is anything else to be had.

The acting wasn't entirely horrible, I'll admit to that much. The Turner kids who played Ben are certainly entertaining to watch, giving a cute contrast to the grungy atmosphere of the movie. Cancer Man... wait... no, sorry, William Davis could have done better in my opinion, as could Miller... but considering the type of movie this is, one doesn't have a lot of room to nitpick.

As a quick side note, I DO commend this movie for not being gratuitously gory. Its rare to find modern movies in this genre that don't blatantly use blood and guts to invoke fear.

All in all, this movie isn't the worst of its kinda, but it is in no way the best. If you want cheap, minimal-gore thrills that will make you jump, go see it. If you're looking for a deeper, more thought-provoking thriller... I strongly recommend looking elsewhere.

I saw this one tonight at a screening, and I wasn't entirely disappointed. I'll be honest -- there's nothing new in The Messengers. It's all been seen before in earlier, more original movies. This one is kind of a "best of" reel of some good ideas from other horror movies. If you're looking for something original and scary, this isn't it. If you're looking for a little jumpy fun, I can't say this one is a miss. By virtue of the "good ideas" being good, they work. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in assembling them in a reasonably coherent manner.

My only real gripe is that Dylan McDermitt looks about as out of place working the fields of his farm as any actor I can think of. They could have at least tried a LITTLE bit harder casting that part.

Think The Birds + Ju On + Amityville Horror + Sixth Sense.

I don't think that I would completely write off the Pang brothers, Oxide and Danny, as they don't completely go into the self-indulgent post-modernism that has panged, no pun intended, the horror filmmakers of late. Only once or twice they jump into 'Saw' territory. But even having not seen the majority of the Japanese horror movies that have give rise to the over-abundance of 'ghosts-in-my-house' wave (and, likewise, to their American counterparts), there isn't too much with surprise or shocks in The Messengers.

I'm sure they're self-conscious of the films they're paying homage/ripping off (the one scene involving the crows and their rendezvous with John Corbett's character is like a chummier mash of The Birds and North by Northwest; Shining and Close Encounters references seem a little more than clear to me too), yet they also succumb to having their film be really affect-less. It's never too stupid though; I didn't have a disliking toward any one character, with the exception being maybe towards the end with Corbett (I don't think I'm spoiling much there), and it's the sort of typical family-moves-into-a-creepy-house story that decides to hit the usual bases without going rapidly wrong on the marks.

But there's also the muddle that comes in dealing with the supernatural side of things, amid the average scares of 'what did I hear in the other room, I'll go check'. For one thing, the variations on who the ghosts and demons in the house are- if they're the family that used to live there, or if they might be the whatevers that killed off the family striking back at the new family in the house. There's fair acting from the family (Kristen Stewart of Panic Room fills in the teenage-girl niche, and there's competent work from McDermott and Miller; Colbert is a little creepy, but I guess that's the point; William B. Davis's bit part is the best real surprise of the movie), but it's all at the mercy of a standard script that might've been better, damn if I say it, as a half hour TV episode or something. Only sometimes, too, are there some potential unintentional laughs to be had, mostly towards the climax and with the very randomly placed crows that can only come in a pretty inexplicable flick such as this.

In the end, the Messengers is nothing new, and won't contribute much at all to the horror genre at large, but I wouldn't throw it in my 'I hate this movie so much' bin either, as it only continues to that non-threatening realm of the kinda-creepy PG-13 haunted house picture.